Microsoft to Take .NET Cross-Platform to Linux, Mac

In addition, although it is not delivering a new version of Visual Studio, such as it did last year at a similar event in New York when it released Visual Studio 2013 and Visual Studio Online, Microsoft has named the next release of the toolset Visual Studio 2015 and is releasing a preview. Visual Studio 2015 Preview and .NET 2015 Preview are now available for download. Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015 will deliver new capabilities enabling developers to build applications across multiple platforms—from Windows to Linux to iOS and Android.
Key new features in Visual Studio 2015 Preview include the ability to create ASP.NET 5 Websites that can run on multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac; integrated support for building apps that run across devices with integration of Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova and Microsoft’s new Visual C++ tools for cross-platform library development; a Connected Services experience enabling easier integration of services into apps including Office 365, Salesforce and Azure Platform Services; Smart Unit Testing (formerly PEX) technology from Microsoft Research integrated into Visual Studio 2015; and new coding productivity capabilities, enabled by the new .NET compiler platform known as Roslyn.
Microsoft also announced that Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 is available now for every Visual Studio 2013 user, including dozens of improvements across the product plus several great new features, including integrated tools for Unity development. Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 is now available for download and includes a new GPU Usage tool in the Performance and Diagnostics hub which helps developers determine whether the CPU or the GPU is the performance bottleneck; improvements to JSON and HTML editors, as well as enhanced tools for Azure WebJobs; support for SQL Server 2014 from SQL Server Data Tool projects and other enhancements; and numerous enhancements and new features to Team Foundation Server, with highlights such as Git Pull Requests and other improvements to work planning, test case management, release management and other capabilities.
Microsoft has added a neat little tool for Android developers. The new Visual Studio Emulator for Android Preview is now available for download, supporting Visual Studio 2015 Preview. This emulator will provide an integrated experience for developers using Visual Studio to build for Android, including top-notch performance and support for both Apache Cordova and Xamarin projects.

“As developers target multiple mobile device form factors, great emulators are key to productive development cycles,” Somasegar said. “As part of Visual Studio 2015, developers now get access to the Visual Studio Emulator for Android, a high-performance x86-based emulator for the Android platform that supports a variety of productivity features for emulating device inputs like accelerometer, location and network conditions.”

Meanwhile, additional enhancements and announcements at Connect(); include that Azure SDK 2.5 is now available for download. In this release new features were added for Visual Studio 2012, 2013 and 2015 Preview developers. New capabilities include improvements to cloud diagnostics and remote debugging support for Azure VMs and Cloud Services and Azure HDInsight tooling. Developers working on big data scenarios will now have tooling support for HDInsight right from Visual Studio, this includes the capability to author, run and manage Hive jobs and create and manage Schema.
Visual Studio 2015 Azure developers will now have access to the preview release of Cloud Code Analysis Pack via NuGet, bringing real-time code analysis for Azure-specific scenarios right into the code editor for early warning of problems that could impact deployed applications.
Visual Studio Tools for Unity (VSTU) 2.0 Preview will deliver its first release for Visual Studio 2015 Preview. This 2.0 release will include new features such as better support for debugger attributes and visualization for objects.
The Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova updated CTP for Visual Studio 2013 is now available. This release continues to provide support developers for testing the Apache Cordova tooling in Visual Studio 2013, including new features such as iOS debugging support and many other new features and bug fixes.
Microsoft also noted a release management licensing change. Effective Jan. 1, target nodes or endpoints to which an application is being deployed to no longer need to be licensed. And the company said Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscribers now have access to top-of-the-line developer training from Pluralsight. The new benefit provides subscribers with technical, developer-focused training delivered by industry experts.